The Man She Should Have Married

She glanced down to where he lay sleeping, his head resting on her stomach, his profile cutting a clean line against her pale skin.

Not even when they had met all those years ago and she had fallen hopelessly in love with him.

That had been like a thunderclap.

When their eyes had first met she had felt it crackle down her spine and along her limbs like lightning.

Even then, with no actual physical experience of men, she had known that what she was feeling was special. Unique. Miraculous.

He was everything she had ever wanted.

But she had been too young and too sheltered, too unsure of herself to let their love follow its own path. Too conscious of her role as heir to Lamington.

Her fingers trembled against the sheet.

It had been drummed into her since birth that duty always outweighed personal desires and dreams. Was it any wonder, then, that pitting her first love against four hundred years of history had torn her in two?

She had grown up surrounded by beautiful things in glass cases. Books that were never read. Paintings and tapestries that were never allowed to see daylight.

Faced with the possibility of an imperfect ‘real’ love she had ended everything.

But she wasn’t that same fearful, uncertain girl any more.

She had grown up.

She had learned to ‘manage’ her parents, and she also managed the family finances and ran a twenty-eight-thousand-acre estate.

Most important of all, she had learned to trust her judgement. She knew her own mind now—and this relationship with Farlan wasn’t based on some naïve ideal.

She knew her faults—and his—and she loved him anyway.

Her heartbeat stalled.

She tried the words out inside her head.

I love Farlan.

She felt dizzy with panic and shock.

But why?

Breathing out shakily, she pressed her fingers against her eyes, blocking out the sight of Farlan’s naked sleeping form.

How could she not have seen it before?

It seemed so obvious to her now that she loved him and had never stopped loving him.

It had just been easier to tell everyone that she had stopped.

To tell herself that she had.

She had buried the truth deep and learned to live a quiet, colourless life.

When he wasn’t there—when their relationship had been defined by impossibility—she had been able to do it. But he was here now. And what had once seemed so impossible, so out of reach, was already in her grasp.

Her hand trembled against the soft stubble on his head.

Outside there was a growl of thunder and the sudden drumming of rain like gravel against a windscreen. The sudden intrusion of reality made her flinch.